the editor talks with you

As you may have once dreamed, we dreamed of owning our own home. When we moved to New York, the real estate prices were so high, we could not afford anything for sale. We felt like caged animals in walk-up apartments. We finally found a rambling 11-room farmhouse for sale in the New Jersey suburbs at Maple and Meadow Streets. Our banker decided we could afford it. It was more than 100 years old. No telling how many young families had bought and sold it over those years. It was ideal for a young family with adventurous boys.

After the closing, we walked into “our house.” The previous owner had left a gift. On the kitchen counter sat a chilled bottle of champagne, a pair of glasses and a little note that read: “I hope you love living here as much as we did.” That was 5 houses and 5 moves ago to different states where a wandering editor and his wife have taken our adventurous boys. We have since forgotten the seller’s name but never her gesture and note. We loved living there until a better job at more money lured us to another state. Like their mother, an Air Force brat and talented editor herself, our boys had to get used to moving often and making new friends wherever we went. What I did not know then was that the lady who sold us her home was practicing lagniappe, a French Creole word and custom of giving the customer something extra.

We learned about lagniappe from a favorite writer, Mark Twain, in his classic Life on the Mississippi written in 1883. “We picked up one excellent word – a word worth travelling to New Orleans to get, a nice limber, expressive, handy word – ‘lagniappe,’” Mark wrote. “They pronounce it lanny-yap ... “When a child or a servant buys something in a shop – or even the mayor or governor, for aught I know – he finishes the operation by saying, ‘Give me something for lagniappe.’ “The shopman always responds and gives the child a bit of liquorice-root.”

A pair of blues musicians we know wanted a super romantic wedding. They planned to marry in New Orleans, home of the blues and much of early American jazz. They arranged for a New Orleans wedding planner to line up a church, hotel, flowers and a horse and carriage ride to begin their honeymoon and future together. In the carriage when they left the church they, too, found a bottle of champagne, “Lagniappe,” the wedding planner said.

The word entered English from the Louisiana French adapting an Inca word Spanish Creoles brought to New Orleans. After the Spanish conquered the Inca Empire certain native words entered the Spanish language. The Spanish Empire included Louisiana. In his book Creoles of Louisiana, George Washington Cable wrote of the Spanish influence on Louisiana Creole French: “The Spanish tongue left few words in the French of the slaves. The terrors of the calabozo, with its chains and whips and branding irons, were condensed into the French calaboose, while ñapa, the gratuity added by retailers grew in French Creole culture.” Retailers today practice a flamboyant style with discounts and buy 1 get 1 free offers. You can do it for your loved ones, too.

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